What is the Wisdom Fund?
The Wisdom Fund is a fixed-income solution designed to expand capital access for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) women-owned businesses while delivering competitive financial returns. This innovative initiative combines purpose with performance, enabling investors to support wealth creation and economic opportunity for women of color across the United States. Co-created to introduce new thinking and sustainable solutions, the Wisdom Fund provides a meaningful way to align your financial goals with measurable impact in underserved communities.
Empowering Women Entrepreneurs While Earning Competitive Returns
Designed for Competitive Returns
Earns a potential 4% return while supporting an investment that drives tangible impact for women entrepreneurs of color.1
Investments contribute to supporting lasting solutions, fostering systemic change to address the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs of color.
Available to accredited investors offering an exclusive investment opportunity.
Designed with a fixed 60-month investment term, offering stability and a long-term focus on impact.
The fund requires a $100,000 minimum investment, ensuring significant contributions toward impactful outcomes.
Designed for Competitive Returns 
How does the Wisdom Fund help?
Every day 1,800 new women-owned businesses are added to the U.S. economy, yet women-owned businesses only receive a small fraction of total lending.3 The impact of the small business lending gap, which can affect many of the 12 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., is significant.4
Capital access is a significant issue for women entrepreneurs5 and is particularly pronounced for BIPOC women entrepreneurs. To illustrate, “if revenues generated by minority women-owned firms matched those currently generated by all women-owned businesses, they would add four million new jobs and $1.2 trillion in revenues to the U.S. economy.”6
When you invest in the Wisdom Fund, your capital empowers mission-driven financial institutions to provide loans to BIPOC women, supporting their businesses and growth.
The Statistics
Even when controlling for credit risk, low credit risk women-owned firms were approved for business loans at a rate 10% lower than man-owned businesses.7
Less than 5% of small business lending—only about $1 in $23—goes to women.8
Small business ownership can be economically transformative, “the median net worth for Black business owners is 12 times higher than Black nonbusiness owners.”9
Despite accounting for almost a third of all businesses in the US, women-owned small businesses receive 16% of all conventional small business loans issued.10
Alternative funding sources are also limited, women receive just 7 percent of all venture funding.11
What kind of businesses does
the Wisdom Fund support?
The borrowers profiled below were all funded by CNote partner lenders.
They are representatives of the borrowers the Wisdom Fund aims to support.
The changing economic and social landscape in the United States highlights the crucial need to invest in women-led businesses. These entrepreneurs are not just building companies; they’re creating resilient enterprises that positively impact their communities, generate jobs, and drive economic growth. However, many women still face barriers when it comes to accessing the capital they […]
Across the United States, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) entrepreneurs are building businesses that strengthen communities, create jobs, and contribute to the economy. These business owners share the same dreams as any entrepreneur: to grow their businesses, serve their customers, and build something lasting. But the path to success can look very different […]
Accredited Investors have a unique chance to align wealth-building goals for values, fostering positive change without compromising on returns.
Women entrepreneurs face unique challenges in accessing capital and resources to grow their businesses. The Wisdom Fund, a collaboration between CNote and mission-driven lenders, is designed to address these challenges by providing targeted support to women-owned businesses. What is the Wisdom Fund? CNote’s Wisdom Fund channels funds specifically into loans for women entrepreneurs. By partnering […]
Co-authored by CNote’s VP of Business Development, Danielle Burns and CNote’s Director of Impact Evaluation, Tamra Thetford. Women of color (WOC) entrepreneurs continue to face intersectional and systemic barriers — such as discrimination, bias, and a lack of networks — that limit their access to capital. Business ownership is a powerful wealth-building tool, and supporting […]
Partners
By working with some of the country’s most inspiring and dedicated leaders, Wisdom Fund drives capital and new opportunities into the hands of hard-working women across the United States. Further, CNote’s partners are committed to co-creating the product alongside the community we aim to serve, giving women entrepreneurs a voice where they traditionally have not been heard.
- Please see our latest Wisdom Fund Private Placement Memorandum ↩︎
- Individuals are “accredited investors” if their net worth is at least $1,000,000, excluding the value of their primary residence, or they have income at least $200,000 each year for the last two years (or $300,000 combined income if married) and have the expectation to make the same amount this year. ↩︎
- American Express – The 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, p. 4. (2018) ↩︎
- Harvard Business School – State of Small Business Lending, p. 14.(2016) ↩︎
- “Just $1 of every $23 in conventional small business loans goes to a woman-owned business.”(2014) ↩︎
- American Express – The 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, p. 5. (2018) ↩︎
- Majority Report of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship (2014) ↩︎
- Federal Reserve – Small Business Credit Survey, Report On Women-Owned Firms (2016) ↩︎
- AEO – The Tapestry of Black Business Ownership in America (2017) ↩︎
- Vox – US small business is changing: 11 things you need to know (2018) ↩︎
- Majority Report of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship (2014) ↩︎
